Churchill:
stopped twice by censor Ruth Ive from talking about a
bombing, he slammed down the phone in a
rage

Ruth,
the girl whose job was to shut Churchill
up

by JOEL WOLCHOVER

Ruth Ive: at the
age of 22 she was playing a crucial role in British
security

IT
WAS a brave man who interrupted Winston Churchill
mid-sentence and told him to shut up, but throughout the
Second World War a young London woman did just
that.

Ruth Ive was 22 when she was given the job of
monitoring Britain's only wartime transatlantic telephone
link, used by the prime minister to communicate with
President Roosevelt.

Her task was to stop Churchill, and other high-ranking
members of the Government, armed forces and Royal Family
with access to the crucial line, from saying anything which
could bolster the Axis powers' war effort.

The line, actually a radio link, was the first
Anglo-American "hotline". It was also all that was left
after the Atlantic telephone cables were fractured, on
purpose, to prevent German agents passing information
between Europe and north America.

General Post Office scientists feared that the radio
signals, which were protected only by a rather primitive
scrambling device, could be intercepted and decoded by the
Germans.

More than once Mrs Ive was obliged to cut into
Churchill's and Roosevelt's conversations with the standard
warning, comical under the circumstances, that she would
have to report their indiscretion to a "higher
authority".

On one occasion after she had twice stopped Churchill
from telling Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden about a
bomb attack on West Smithfield market, the prime minister
slammed down the phone in a rage. This was characteristic,
Mrs Ive explains now, of the black moods which overwhelmed
Churchill during his bouts of manic depression.

Now 81, Mrs Ive joined the postal and telegraph
censorship office when war broke out. From a base in the
City, she had complete authority over hotline callers.
Subjects they couldn't talk about included the results of
enemy action, troop movements, shortages of food and other
supplies, public morale and any military activities.

Sensitive issues could be discussed by setting out an
agenda for each conversation, sent ahead in more secure
coded telegrams. Churchill and Roosevelt could then talk by
referring only to the numbered points.

Having signed the Official Secrets Act, Mrs Ive's
remarkable study has gone unacknowledged for more than 50
years, save for a glowing reference from the Ministry of
Information. Only now, thanks to research undertaken by her
for a new documentary -- to be screened on The History
Channel at 5 pm on 3 October -- can the full significance of
her role be understood.

It has emerged that the Germans were indeed, right from
the start of US participation in the war, listening in to
the radio signals which carried the crudely scrambled
conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt. Transcripts
were on Hitler's desk in Berlin almost before Mrs Ive
had finished writing up her shorthand notes into longhand in
London.

Thanks to her vigilance and that of her fellow censors --
and the confidence with which they laid down the law to the
leaders of the free world -- the Germans' greatest code --
breaking coup yielded little useful intelligence.

Website
note: There is a full appendix in Churchill's War, vol.
iii about Churchill's indiscretions on the transatlantic
telephone, and General George C Marshall's deep
concern about them. David Irving has spent
twenty-five years searching for the transcripts taken by Mrs
Ives and her colleagues in Britain, and by the US Navy
Department at the American end; the latter were ordered
sealed under presidential order by Harry S Truman, as
part of the records of the Office of Censorship.